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NEW YORK — Before his news conference Wednesday to wrap up an exhilarating season, New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns bumped into pending free agent Pete Alonso at Citi Field.

“I told him I was about to answer a lot of questions about him. He told me, ‘Good luck,'” Stearns said with a grin.

“He’s a great Met. I hope we have him back. I think we both understand this is a process and everyone’s got their own interests and Pete deserves to go out into the free agent market and see what’s out there and then ultimately make the best choice for him and his family.”

The slugger’s immediate future is one important issue heading into an offseason full of them for the Mets, coming off a surprising playoff run that ended Sunday with a Game 6 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.

“I think we probably ran out of gas a little bit. We had pushed our guys really hard from June 1 on because we needed to,” Stearns said. “Every single game in the regular season mattered and then clearly every single game in the postseason mattered. And that’s part of it. We also ran into a really, really talented Dodgers team that was playing about as good a baseball as you could play.”

To overcome those Dodgers next season, not to mention Philadelphia and Atlanta in their own division, the Mets will need to restock the pitching staff.

Luis Severino (11-7, 3.91 ERA) and Jose Quintana (10-10, 3.75) can become free agents. Sean Manaea (12-6, 3.47) seems likely to decline a $13.5 million player option for 2025 and join them on the open market.

Those three veterans combined for 94 regular-season starts and 10 more in the playoffs as New York finished two wins short of the World Series.

“This isn’t new to us. We faced a similar task last offseason. We’re going to have to replace innings,” Stearns said. “Certainly part of that could potentially be from some of those guys returning, or we may look elsewhere. But we’re going to have to add starting pitching. We’re going to have to add multiple starters. We understand that. We went into last offseason with the same need and I think we’ll be able to do it.”

Stearns has been particularly good at finding pitching, not just this year with the Mets but going back to his time running the small-market Milwaukee Brewers.

He brought in Severino and Manaea last winter on short-term deals, and both delivered in a big way.

“There are no hard-and-fast rules for me,” Stearns said. “If we look at the history of long-term investments with pitchers, it is not overwhelmingly a rosy picture. But there are pitchers who have gone into their mid- or late-30s and pitched very well. And so if we think we can identify that, then there could be exceptions.”

Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Blake Snell are top-of-the-rotation starters available in free agency. Burnes, who turned 30 on Tuesday, was drafted and developed by the Brewers when Stearns was in charge. The right-hander won the 2021 NL Cy Young Award with Milwaukee before being traded to Baltimore last winter.

“I think it’s too early to determine exactly where we’re going to take our shots,” Stearns said. “I would expect us to be active in free agency.”

Once contract options are decided next month, New York will probably have more than $100 million coming off a major league-high 2024 payroll of $332 million under owner Steve Cohen.

“We’ve got financial flexibility. It means that pretty much the entirety of the player universe is potentially accessible to us. That’s an enormous opportunity. I envision us taking advantage of that opportunity and being aggressive in certain spaces,” Stearns said.

“We’re also not going to do anything that hamstrings us in future years and prevents us from continually adding, supplementing to our core group.”

Alonso earned a $20.5 million salary this season and batted .240 with 34 homers, 88 RBIs and a .788 OPS while playing in all 162 regular-season games. Those numbers at the plate were down from previous years, but the fan-favorite first baseman was productive during the postseason and came through with several pivotal home runs. He also drew 12 walks in 13 games.

“We have great memories from this run,” Stearns said. “It’s also time for us to begin to move forward and see what we can do to build on this to ensure we have the type of sustainable competitiveness — true sustainable competitiveness — that’s eluded this organization for a long time.”

Alonso turns 30 in December and is represented by high-profile agent Scott Boras.

“Who Pete is as a person is important. What he means to this franchise is important. Who he is as a player is also important and what he contributes on the field. There’s no magic formula to this,” Stearns said.

“Pete and I frankly have never really talked about his contract face-to-face. I think those conversations are best left generally with a player’s representative. But Pete and I talked about the team plenty. He’s very invested in our group. Certainly was very invested in this team this year and obviously got some enormous hits for us down the stretch.”

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Source: Rangers happy if Bochy stays beyond ’25

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Source: Rangers happy if Bochy stays beyond '25

The hiring of Skip Schumaker as a senior advisor may mean that the Texas Rangers have their future manager under contract.

But if current manager Bruce Bochy, who is likely to be inducted into the Hall of Fame once his career is over, wants to continue beyond 2025, the Rangers will enthusiastically welcome that.

According to one source, Bochy will have the latitude to continue if that’s what he wants.

“If [Bochy] wants to manage beyond 2025, [the Rangers] are good with that,” a highly ranked source told ESPN.

Bochy, who turns 70 in April, just completed his 27th season managing in the big leagues — for the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants before he became the Rangers’ skipper in 2023 — and ranks eighth all time in managerial wins with 2,171, the most for any current manager.

Next season, he will likely pass Dusty Baker and Sparky Anderson on the list. Bochy’s teams have won four championships — the Giants in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and the Rangers in 2023.

Schumaker, 44, is viewed as a rising star in the managerial ranks after his first two seasons, with the Miami Marlins.

Miami made the playoffs in 2023 and Schumaker was named National League Manager of the Year. But when the Marlins’ ownership effectively pushed out Kim Ng, the GM who hired Schumaker, he asked the team to void a 2025 option year on his contract, and he left the Marlins after the 2024 season.

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Shildt gets extension after Padres’ playoff return

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Shildt gets extension after Padres' playoff return

One year into his tenure with the Padres, Mike Shildt has been rewarded with a two-year contract extension that ties the manager to San Diego through 2027.

The Padres announced the agreement Wednesday with the 56-year-old manager after they went 93-69, finishing five games behind the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West and claiming the top NL wild card.

“I am honored to continue leading this team toward Peter Seidler’s vision of bringing a World Series championship to San Diego,” Shildt said in a statement. “In collaboration with our players and coaching staff, we are committed to building on our success, serving our community and the City of San Diego, and delivering a winning team to our incredible and deserving fan base.”

San Diego swept a two-game wild-card series against the Atlanta Braves then took a 2-1 lead on the Dodgers in the best-of-five NL Division Series. Los Angeles bounced back to win the final two games 8-0 and 2-0.

The Padres tied for first in the majors with a .263 batting average and ranked sixth with a .745 OPS. Their 3.86 team ERA rated 12th, and their pitching staff’s 1,453 strikeouts came in sixth.

Shildt previously managed the Cardinals from 2018 to 2021, logging a 252-199 regular-season record and guiding St. Louis into the postseason in three of his four seasons. He was voted the NL Manager of the Year in 2019.

“As Mike demonstrated this year, he has an unwavering commitment to winning and a unique set of skills that got our group to perform at a high level,” Padres president of baseball operations and general manager A.J. Preller said in a statement. “He possesses a true love for this team and the game of baseball, and I am thrilled to continue to work together with Mike to bring a championship to the City of San Diego.”

Field Level Media contributed to this report.

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Bottom 10: Clemson and its fans thrown for a loss

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Bottom 10: Clemson and its fans thrown for a loss

Inspirational thought of the week:

Do you love me?
Do you wanna be my friend?
And if you do
Well then don’t be afraid to take me by the hand
If you want to
I think this is how love goes
Check yes or no
— “Check Yes or No,” George Strait

Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located among the giant concrete reinforcement pillars installed under the Indiana football offices to support Curt Cignetti’s self-confidence, we are still trying to process the ceaseless series of sea change/Earth change/mindset change/sleep-cycle change events that were thrust upon us over the course of only a few days’ time.

We had Halloween, turning the clocks back an hour, the release of a new Liam Neeson/Ron Perlman mob movie and a Week 10 slate that saw a gaggle of ranked teams pushed and/or upset by unranked teams, not to mention Pur-don’t and Northworstern going into OT.

And oh yeah, dummy me. I forgot the biggest event of them all. The one that was unfurling just as we were compiling these rankings Tuesday evening, Nov. 5, 2024. I am, of course, speaking of the #MACtion doubleheader of Boiling Green at Centralized Michigan and My Hammy of Ohio at Baller State. Oh, and the eve of “The Golden Bachelorette: The Men Tell All.”

With apologies to Joan Vassos, Jesse Palmer, Matt James, Tyler Cameron, Cleisthenes and Steve Harvey, here’s the post-Week 10 Bottom 10 rankings.


The good news is that the Golden (plated) Flashes, aka America’s last winless FBS team, did not lose their 18th straight game. The bad news is that it’s only because they didn’t play. Now they kick off Week 11 early with the first of four straight midweek games to end the season. It starts with a visit from fellow Ohioans Ohio, followed by a trip to fellow Ohioans My Hammy of Ohio, a visit from fellow Ohioans Akronmonious and then a trip to Buffalo, which isn’t in Ohio, but I’m pretty sure Ohio eats more Buffalo wings than any other state, so it feels like it is.


Brett Favre Funding U also managed to escape its open date without a loss ahead of hosting Marshall this weekend. The Olden Eagles are already eyeing their potential Pillow Fight of the Year of the Century in their season finale to Bottom 10 Waiting Lister Troy Bolton State. Actually, they’re already eyeing the weekend after that, when the season is finally over.


Speaking of the Waiting List, that’s where the Minors were just two weeks ago, but after back-to-back Pillow Fight losses to Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-Tech and Meh-dle Tennessee, they have jumped up off the bench outside and burst into the front door like me when the buffet hostess finally says, “McGee, party of one!” Now they will play in unprecedented Pillow Fight Three-peat against … yeah, like that hostess, we’re going to make you wait a minute.


Our old friends the Minuetmen also spent part of this fall on the Waiting List, but they answered the call of duty by following up their non-FBS win over Jack Wagner by getting housed by another Waiting List member, a fellow 2-7 squad out of the S-E-C, Miss Sus Hippie State. Now the Mess plays last week’s Coveted Fifth Spot winner Liberty. It’s always a weird headspace for a group of Revolutionary War soldiers to try to defeat Liberty.


The Tigers tumble down The Hill from the fancy-schmancy Coaches Poll top 10 into the Coveted Fifth Spot after losing to #goacc mid-packer Louisville. We were on the fence about whether to put Death Valley or Happy Valley into this slot, but our minds were made up after downing a bottle of refreshing water that had been winged at our heads from the Clemson student section.


I can hear the lobby conversation now. “Hey, Clemson, did y’all really just lose to Louisville and land in the Coveted Fifth Spot?” “Hey, FSU, did y’all really just lose by 24 points to North Carolina and is the only team you’ve beaten really Cal?” Then they both grab up their briefcases and head into the courtroom to explain why they are too good for the ACC.


The Buttermakers lost the B1G Bottom 10 Bowl presented by Rust-eze, falling to Northworstern in overtime. Now they finish the year with three of four games against top 10 teams in Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana. In related news, sources tell Bottom 10 JortsCenter that Purdue’s legendary engineering department is trying to invent one of those Tony Stark time machine thingies so they can fast forward to winter.


The New Owls have flown back into these standings after following up their first-ever win as an FBS program with their seventh-ever loss as an FBS program. Now they hit the road for their first-ever Pillow Fight of the Week, a matchup with border rival UTEPid. Told you we’d get to it.


If the Bottom 10 were a series “Game of Thrones” memes, this is where we’d see a photo of Boromir talking and giant white letters that read “ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY GET SMOKED 59-21 BY ONE-WIN UAB AND NOT END UP IN THE BOTTOM 10.” OK, sure, let’s go on and do it …


My OG Bottom 10 champs are back! The Panthers keep racking up moral victories. Their only actual victories came back-to-back in September over Chattanooga and Vanderbilt. So, if you’re scoring at home, and we are, Georgia State beat Vandy, who beat Bama, who has been ranked No. 1 and who beat Georgia, who has been ranked No. 1 and who beat Texas, who has been ranked No. 1. I almost printed this paragraph out on Georgia State stationery and nailed it to the door of the College Football Playoff selection committee meeting room at the Gaylord Texan, like Martin Luther at the Castle Church.

Waiting List: FA (not I) U, Akronmonious, Meh-dle Tennessee, WhyOMGing?, You A Bee?, Whew Mexico State, Temple of Doom, Utaw State, Charlotte 3-and-6ers, assistant coaches impersonating volcanos.

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